Three screens and a cloud is a powerful idea that is moving the technology industry forward. Each ecosystem has its own idea of how that cloud should look and function. If you’re in the Microsoft camp you’re probably using SkyDrive as your cloud. The latest update for the web version of SkyDrive just became even more awesome with high DPI support and much, much more.

If you use SkyDrive there are a variety of ways to get at your files. Native apps on nearly any platform (Windows Phone, Windows 8, iOS, Android, Mac OS, Windows desktop), OS integration with Windows Phone and Windows 8, and through any modern web browser are some of the ways to access files on SkyDrive. The team running SkyDrive just pushed out some awesome updates that make the web experience pretty awesome.

Photo prowess

SkyDrive is a great place to back up photos and share them. Your Windows Phone can do it automatically for any picture you take. And users still share photos from their DSLRs and other cameras all the time using SkyDrive. The latest update looks aimed directly at all the new Lumia 1020 owners sharing those super detailed pictures – support for high resolution displays.

SkyDrive will now measure the DPI scale of your display and, if appropriate, display high resolution photos and thumbnails. Yours truly doesn’t have a 1020 yet, so I bummed this SkyDrive link from Daniel so you can check it out yourself. Note: Some browsers don’t support those high DPI screens yet, like Chrome. So make sure you’re living large with Internet Explorer.

Another fun new feature in the web version of SkyDrive is support for GIFs. You know, those fun moving pictures that you pronounce with a “j” and not a “g”. Keep calm in the comments. While nothing stopped you from uploading GIFs to SkyDrive in the past, they didn’t animate. Now they do and Rich, who has a GIF for every occasion, will be extremely happy.

Sorting and management

Microsoft has added a few little tweaks and features that may be small, but go a long way in making the web version of SkyDrive a much nicer place. For example, you can now rotate images within the browser with the new rotate button.

You can also use the “All photos view” in any folder throughout SkyDrive. It’s super handy for when you need a specific folder to sort photos by having the newest ones on top.

More options to share

SkyDrive now makes sharing easier. Before today, there were two types of things you could share: an individual folder and all its contents or an individual file inside a folder. That posed a few limitations for folks who want to share a lot. So how did they fix it?

With SkyDrive you now can share individual groups of files from anywhere in your SkyDrive. For example, you can make a group to share that is composed of files from two different locations in SkyDrive.

New shared view

With the new ways to share SkyDrive has implemented a new view to see what you’re sharing. This allows you to track and manage everything you’ve shared from SkyDrive. The “Shared” view gives you an overview of items you’ve shared or have been shared with you. A very welcomed addition.

Editing documents with no sign-in required

Office documents you share can now be edited by recipients without the need to sign in. This happens when you share any SkyDrive file via email and the person you’re sending it to may not have a Microsoft account. Now they can edit without needing to sign-in.

You can now edit text files and more within SkyDrive

While you can do basic editing to Word files online, that may be overkill. SkyDrive now has native support to view and edit a variety of text files.

Text files like JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and many code files are supported in this new view and edit mode. Going above the basic features, it also has syntax highlighting support, find word, and word completion suggestions. And like above, you can share files and allow others to edit them. There’s also the ability to view what’s different between the changes so you can see what changes have been made.

What do you guys think of all these changes to SkyDrive? Sound off below with your favorite new feature. Be sure to go to skydrive.com to check it out for yourself.

He tweeted other storage is fixed in GDR2 so the whole web community wrote 500 pages of article elaborating on his 140 alphabet of tweet that other storage is fixed.. But noone knows what has been fixed.. can we switch on the auto upload to skydrive after GDR2 or not??

I'm sorry, but he's American and everyone knows Americans can't speak properly and often like making up their own pronunciations on words regardless of how long they have been around for (see the recent article where people are disputing the pronunciation of "Nokia"). It's a G for graphics, so how the creator failed to comprehend that is beyond me.

It's an acronym. It stands for Graphics Interchange Format. And the correct pronunciation is "jif". Acronyms are pronounced (or not pronounced) according to complex rules and conventions. Of course, one can choose to pronounce anything any way they feel like, but there may be consequences. You have been warned. :)

I've always said it as "jif" as it rolls off the tongue easier when saying "jif and jpeg". In the late 90's I heard the creator pronounced it that way too so I've kept saying it that way. I've met almost no one that says it the right way :(

Well GAP is the word "gap" with a hard-G such as "Goat", "Gift" or "Gutter". But not all G-words are the same as you have words like "Giant", "Giraffe", and even "German" with a J sound. I could spell "German" like "Jerman" and it would be said the same...

The problem with English is that there are no universal rules... so one person might say "GIF is like Gift so I'll say it with a hard-G sound", but another person might say "GIF is like JIF so I'll say it like that". JIF is a US peanut butter and it was named after that so that's the correct way to say it. People may want to argue semantics all day long, but the GIF creator said it was prounced "JIF" and so that's the right way :P

I know that these take up a lot of space, but perhaps the ability to upload RAW files to SkyDrive? Of course, it would be up to the user to monitor available disk space in SkyDrive to make sure that there is sufficient space for the uploaded files.

I know its off topic but does anyone think that there is a chance of us getting a case like the galaxy s4 s-view case so we can see the time and notifications. I think it would be great and I would definitely buy one.

With Glance Screen it would not be possible as the clock keeps changing its position to avoid LED burnout. However, it can be done for default lockscreen orientation, but it would look weird to have a cut out at the bottom.

I just wish I could share out SkyDrive files without revealing my entire name. Seeing "Stephen X's SkyDrive" kind of makes me want to not share out my pictures from there. I think an Imgur-style image sharing page for it would be great.

As a former user of other online cloud storage (LiveDrive), I can say simply that SkyDrive is simply the best software/cloud offering I could imagine. I just love it and use it for everything. I wish they'd let me pay for TBs of storage, though. A 175GB just isnt enough.

Riddle me this. Suppose I want to order prints of pics I've uploaded to SkyDrive.
Is there a way for me to upload pics from SkyDrive to Shutterfly (or Costco's service or any other service) to order prints, or do I have to continue uploading from my hard drive?
Thanks for any info anyone can provide!

I really want to see more apps taking advantage of Skydrive to store their data, so they can share state seamlessly across devices. But I HATE how I basically have to give each app full trust/access to the entire contents of my Skydrive storage to do that. They sorely need to implement some way to limit apps using the SkyDrive APIs to a single folder per app.

Ok. But I want more space!!!! When MS will offer more than 100 giga to be bought? TOday the maximum space is 145 GB (if you are an old hotmail-skydrive user and subscrive Office 365. But... If I want more... they simply does not have a plan. Do you know some news about it?

Yeeeah definately agree on this. Im still looking for the ultimate online backup system, but skydrive just needs to add an unlimited option to get me totally sold. I'm archiving tons of psd's illustrator files and work stuff that atm only the likes of carbonite could hold. I'd rather be able to access and manage this from my phone when possible. Prefer yearly billing, so glad ms go with that but please, look into unlimited plans :) 100GB max is fine for now - but I gotta think 2-3-5 years down the line, and I'm sure do a lot of other folks.

This is awesome! I primarily use my SkyDrive for sharing high resolution photos between family and friends, so I'm glad to see the SkyDrive team steadily churning out wonderful, meaningful updates! Keep up the good work, SkyDrive team!